Where do migrants settle in Canada?

Canada set a new immigration record by welcoming more than 341,000 immigrants in 2019. In its immigration plans announced in March this year, Canada planned to welcome 341,000 immigrants in 2020, an additional 351,000 in 2021, and welcome another 361,000 immigrants in 2022.

Though the Coronavirus pandemic has caused a temporary setback to country’s immigration plans, the number of immigrants is expected to increase post the pandemic.

The question is where do most of the immigrants settle down in the country? The top provinces where immigrants preferred to settle down are Ontario which received the maximum number of immigrants with more than 150,000 immigrants choosing to settle down here. British Columbia came second with 50,000 immigrants. This was followed by Alberta with more than 43,000 immigrants. Quebec came fourth with 40,000 immigrants followed by Manitoba with nearly 19,000 immigrants.

Top cities where immigrants choose to settle down

Toronto welcomed the largest number of immigrants and beats other Canadian cities by a wide margin. Toronto welcomed more than 118,000 immigrants last year which was 35 percent of the total number of immigrants. This was followed by Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, and Edmonton.

The table below shows the number of migrants in major cities of Canada and their contribution to the population percentage:

Image source-CIC

The above table indicates the intake rate of the cities in terms of one percent of the city’s population. This is per capita intake of each area.

In the coming years, immigration is expected to contribute 100 percent of the population growth in Canada.

If we rank cities based on the growth of population on a per capita basis, Charlottetown takes the first position where 2.4 percent of its growth was contributed by immigrants. One of the reasons for this is the success of the Prince Edward Island provincial nominee program and Atlantic immigration program in bringing in economic class migrants.

Likewise, the  Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces have been able to bring in many economic class immigrants through their provincial nominee programs in the last two decades.

Many cities in the Atlantic region of Canada have welcomed immigrants to their region in recent years to help in their economic development. Cities like Fredericton, Halifax, and Moncton had at least 1.2 percent of immigrants contribute to their population in 2019.

The capital region of Ottawa-Gatineau welcomed immigrants who contributed to one percent of its population last year. Most of them were economic class migrants.

Canada offers numerous immigration pathways for immigrants to settle down in the country. Apart from Express Entry and the Provincial Nominee program, the country has introduced programs such as the Atlantic Immigration Pilot, and the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP) to encourage immigrants to settle down in regional Canada.